Totem Talk: 3.2 PTR log

One of the things I've been doing in preparation for patch 3.2 is running a lot of heroics to fill gear holes in my enhancement set, since I am determined to get that set up to a respectable level before the patch drops. I don't often get to raid enhancement and my restoration set is mostly at the level I need it to be to heal 10 man content, so until fist weapons actually start dropping in raids, that means running CoT Strat a lot and cursing when the Band of Guile drops yet again. Seriously, if you need a Band of Guile, you should run CoT Strat with me in the party, because I can guarantee that it will drop by my very presence.

When you get a good PuG, of course, you keep running until you just can't stand anymore. Today I was in that very circumstance, a PuG that went together so well that we slid from CoT to Utgarde Pinnacle to Utgarde Keep to the Nexus in short order. While the Band of Guile dropped yet again (seriously, I should start charging spellcasters who want rings, as Annhylde's Ring also dropped) there was one moment that struck me as a good reason why I play a shaman. A badly timed disconnect on the part of our healer and one of our DPS led to my switching to heal the tank through three mobs, only to see him and the other DK (who I will charitably say was somewhat inexperienced in his/her class) go down when another proto-drake was added by a corpse exlosion. At this point, low on mana as I was, I managed to pop my Feral Spirit, Shamanistic Rage, Fire Elemental Totem, and Heroism to burn the last add down while restoring my mana in the process.

Yes, it was a one in a hundred fluke chance that everything lined up so that I had the cooldowns necessary to pull it off. But that's why I love playing a shaman nowadays: we really are, in some ways, the most truly hybrid of the hybrid classes. As enhancement, I managed to go from a DPS role to a healing one long enough to get through a trash pull and when that went south I had enough options to successfully transition to a panic button offensive attack on an elite mob and kill it. I can't really sustain that kind of healing as enhancement (except maybe for a Vezax attempt, if I do the 'spec enhancement and gear elemental' thing) but I can actually do a decent job as a fallback healer and can even still DPS to build up Maelstrom procs so that my heals are instant cast while doing it.

Quite frankly, it's been my experience playing a shaman (especially as enhancement, which might well be the most hybrid spec of the most hybrid class) that makes me think that including priests and warriors as hybrid classes is unfair to them. The ability to switch on the fly and use cooldowns to great effect as a panic button is something I've written about before for shamans, but it seems that in Wrath we've gotten even better at it. And frankly, in patch 3.2 we're going to be even better still at it with the debut of the new totem interface.

As you can see in the above interface, each of the three shaman call abilities (Call of Fire, Call of Air and Call of Water) has its own tab on the toolbar, and within each tab there are four other tabs for earth, fire, water and air totems. Each of the three calls has one of each easily selected and saved within and can easily be clicked and dropped on demand. You can very easily set and reset which totems you use eithin each call ability simply by accessing the bar above your main action bars.

It's actually a very simple process once you grasp it, and it doesn't take very much effort at all to do that. I've currently created a 'resto' set of totems (my call of water set), a 'caster DPS' set (my call of fire) and my basic enhancement totems under call of air. Totemic Call, now Call of Earth, allows you to pull up your totems instantly as it does on live. It's even not really very onerous to change your totem set: for instance, if you know there will be DK running with you it's the work of a couple of seconds to switch SoE with Stoneskin or Tremor in your toolbar so that you're not dropping an overwritten totem for the duration of the run, then switching back to your preferred order once the run is over.

So far I've not had as much time to test out as many of the changes as I would have wanted to: I've not yet gotten a chance to heal more than a fast Obsidian Sanctum run since the new five man instance and 10/25 man raids at the Argent Coliseum are not accessible yet on the PTR. I did a Naxx 10 as enhancement and have to say that the totem bar changes alone made that much more tolerable and the new Shamanistic Rage is pretty sweet, you'll end up using it every time it's up and being glad that it's up more often, even with the lesser return per use. Restoration does seem overall better, but it's hard to tell when you're not really able to put it to the stress test of a full Ulduar run, and I simply haven't had time to get in any runs as elemental. This bothers me because I now have a full set of Tier 9 elemental gear (with gems and everything) sitting in my bags, waiting for me to put it on and go blast my enemies with the power of lightning. Wind, fire, all that kind of thing.

I did manage a few Isle of Conquest runs as elemental, however. Since there were no real changes to the spec in 3.2 (so far) the only really noticeable change is that you can drop your totems faster. I'd hardly claim to be an expert at the elemental PvP playstyle (and especially not in a new BG I barely understand the rules to) but I didnt feel like anything much had changed for the spec. If I got the drop on someone before they could stun/root/snare/CC me I could do some reasonable damage, and if not I spent a lot of time waiting to die. The changes to resilience didn't really seem to be prolonging my life all that much, but other people seemed to be able tos tand up to an instant cast Chain Lightning or a Flame Shock/Lava Burst combo a lot better than I expected them to. I think at this point I'm willing to say that I'd like to see elemental get some buffs of some kind to help it keep up, and I should have more of an idea after doing some raiding as elemental as soon as the Coliseum opens up.

Check out more strategies, tips and leveling guides for Shamans in Matthew Rossi's weekly class column: Totem Talk.